Property

Blog for Credits

Rainy Saturday mornings are made for being lazy. But unfortunately I am wasting mine by catching up on work. Since the office has moved location at the same time that I am completing my thesis and at the beginning of term real day-to-day work seems to have been pushed aside. But it will not wait. New students are approaching fast!

My main teaching this term will be in two main areas
(1)    A distance-learning course on the theory and philosophy of Free Software.
(2)    A technology ethics course.

Neither of these courses are new but I am re-vamping the technology ethics course in a big way. The main problem is helping students understand that the technology they take for granted also carries with it problems. Admitting to these problems is not the same as the Luddite impulse to abolish technology but it is the first step at improvement. We need to understand what the problem is if we are to be able to address it.

Previous attempts have been a varying degree of success. Even if the students pass the course I still have a sneaking feeling that some of them just donâ??t get â??itâ??. So this term I am trying something new. The students are going to blog!

Apart from the traditional course material, lectures and seminars the students will be required to set up individual blogs where they will be required to write posts relevant to the different themes of the course. Therefore when the course discusses areas such as privacy or intellectual property the students will be required to post their thoughts and/or other material on the subject.

The course starts with an introduction to the technology and social impact of blogs. Then they will have to go out and start their own (new) blogs. We will also be discussing the importance of visibility, ways in which traffic can be increased and the purpose of blogs either as citizen journalism or entertainment.

This will be followed by a section on basic ethics before the course really begins with applying ethics on questions of technology. The course will end as it usually does with an essay.

Hopefully blogging will enable the students to explore the questions we are looking at on their own terms â?? forcing them to evolve from passive consumers of information to active producers. The students will be graded on their essays but also on their blogs (have not decided upon the criteria for this yet).

In Swedish when things go very wrong we say that it all became pancake â?? so right now I hope that the whole thing does not go pancake.

Posted on by mklang

Offline in London

If you have noticed that it has been quite from this corner of the Internet its because I have been offline in London. Partly I was there lecturing about Copyleft, Free Software and Creative Commons on an intellectual property course organised by Andrew Murray at the LSE. I naturally found time for shopping and culture.

The main cultural event was the Victoria and Albert Museum in general and the Che Guevara exhibition in particular. In addition to graffiti spotting (results will be online on flickr soon).

The shopping was mainly books (I really should try to cut down a little). I frequented mainly second hand stores and ended up with a dozen booksâ?¦ here are some highlights: Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom, Loretta Napoleoni’s Terror Inc, Peter Drahos & John Braithwaite â?? Information Feudalism. Two books by Paul Virilio (The Information Bomb and Negative Horizon) and Val Dusekâ??s The Philosophy of Technology.

Posted on by mklang

Che Guevara Mashup

On 5th of March 1960 Alberto “Korda” Gutierrez took two pictures of Che Guevara. In 1967 the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli received two copies of the famous print at no cost.

Che by Korda

Feltrinelli started making posters from the prints with the notice â??Copyright Feltrinelliâ?? down in the corner. The image was on itâ??s way to become an international icon â?? it has been transformed, transplanted, transmitted and transfigured all over the world.

Korda never received a penny. For one reason only – Cuba had not signed the Berne Convention. Fidel Castro described the protection of intellectual property as imperialistic “bullshit”. Does this mean that Korda’s work is in the public domain? Probably not – but it is in a serious grey area.
Today I saw a new chapter in the Korda print. Paul Frank have made their fame (at least in my opinion – but then again this is not a fashion blog) from their cartoon monkey

The Paul Frank monkey is a cultural icon. So is Korda’s Che image. Paul Frank have now playfully (?), respectfully (?), irreverently (?) created a mashup of these two icons into this inevitable (?) conclusion…

When Che t-shirts became popular again (after the fall of the Soviet Union) I remember hearing a few mumblings from people that “young people” were adopting the icons of the revolution without any knowledge about the content, struggle or ideologi – the past had in fact become a trademark belonging to no one. I tried then to argue for the role of the cultural icon – but some still stuck to their guns and argued that the young were adopting symbols without knowledge and the manufacturers were profiteering on the ideology of the revolution.

From Korda to Paul Frank…evolution?…regression? You decide…

Posted on by mklang

Copyleft@LSE

On Thursday I will be lecturing at the London School of Economics (LSE) on a course entitled Intellectual Property Law and Policy. The focus of my 1,5 hour talk will be on

1.    Peer-to-Peer Systems and Copyright Infringement
2.    The Rise of Copyleft, the Free Software Foundation and The Creative Commons Project

Even though I did not pick the topics, these are subjects close to my heart and the broad sweep of topics should make the lecture an interesting discussion rather than just getting stuck in the individual details.

Point 1 is the development of technology while point 2 refers to the development of social systems to ensure that the technology does not deprive users of basic freedoms enjoyed prior to the advent of the technology.

Posted on by mklang

Serendipity

Serendipity is making fortunate discoveries by accident. It is also one of those words that both sounds good and denotes a good thing.

While looking for the bibliographic data on Lawrence Rosenâ??s book â??Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Lawâ?? (itâ??s the best on FOSS licensing and it’s also online here), I came across another Lawrence Rosen and his new book â??Law as Cultureâ??. The title was enough â?? I bought it.

Now that I have the book I read the front flap of the dust jacket:

Law is integral to culture, and culture to law. Often considered a distinctive domain with strange rules and stranger language, law is actually a part of a cultureâ??s way of expressing its sense of the order of things.

Rosen is a legal anthropologist and he presents a nice intro to the area of law and culture. All this is good stuff and I am looking forward to reading the rest. How did this book end up in my library and on my â??must readâ?? list? A case of mixed identity, two authors with the same name, an interest in software licensingâ?¦

Serendipity isnâ??t it great?

Posted on by mklang

Summer progress

It’s a hot summer. Brains are melting and work is sluggish. Despite this deadlines loom over us the unrelenting sunshine. My PhD thesis defence is on the 2 October. The book goes to the publishers in the last week of August.

The title of the work is “Disruptive Technology – Effects of Technology Regulation on Democracy” and it will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. The blurb on the back cover will have this text:

Social interaction is partly shaped by technology being used. Therefore technological innovation affects modes of social interaction. While gradual technological innovation is often assimilated, some changes can be more disruptive. This research examines the democratic impact of attempts to control disruptive technology through regulation. This is done by studying attempts to regulate the phenomena of online civil disobedience, viruses, spyware, online games, software standards and Internet censorship â?? in particular the affect of these regulatory attempts on the core democratic values of Participation, Communication, Integrity, Property, Access and Autonomy. By studying the attempts to regulate the disruptive effects of Internet technology and the consequences of these regulatory attempts on the IT-based participatory democracy this work shows that the regulation of technology is the regulation of democracy.

If anyone wants to read an advance version it’s available here. If you send me comments before end of August then I can make changes in the text.

Other facts about the book:

It’s 272 pages long
It’s 103027 words long
It will have a cover design by Jähling.

Posted on by mklang

Learning with blogs?

After the summer I will teach my course in Computer Ethics at the University of Göteborg. The course tends to cover the typical areas of computer ethics (integrity, property, harmful content, community etc etc). The main problem is getting the students to â??getâ?? that technology has an ethical dimension.

Once the students realise that there is an ethical dimension or problem they tend to react very enthusiastically.

In order to help them â??get itâ?? I am planning something a bit different. I want to get the students blogging and have a minimum requirement of posts in the area we will be covering. The basic idea is that the students will have to find, adapt and post information. Hopefully this process will engage and awaken the students interest.

So I am looking for input:

Does anyone have any similar experience of this?
How successful was it?
What were the pitfalls and strengths?

All feedback will be appreciated…

Posted on by mklang

Freelancers & Copyright

My last post was an attempt to blog via mail but it was less than successful since all that was posted was the header. I obviously have a lot to learn in this area. The post was supposed to include this text:
Today I am attending the Nordic Seminar for Freelance Journalists. This year it is being held in Kungälv at a conference center with a great view of Bohus Fästning (Bohus Fortress). The whole event is between Friday and Sunday but I am here to talk about Creative Commons licensing for the intellectual property slot on Friday afternoon.

Bohus Fortress

The IP block begins with a discussion on recent caselaw which is followed by a presentation called the archaeology of copyright. After a short coffee break I will present Creative Commons licenses and the session closes with a presentation of the Nordic and European Union rules of Copyright. This sounds like an interesting way to spend the afternoon even if it seems like summer has finally arrived.

It will be interesting to hear first hand from the point of view of freelance journalists their views on copyright and hopefully we will even discuss the influence such technology as blogs.

I was concerned that the freelance journalists would not take well to CC but I could not have been more wrong. Their major concern is that their work can be (and often is) “stolen”, in addition to the need to be better at negotiating for payments for the online use of their work by their print media customers.

They often spoke of their concern for their reputation and themselves as trademarks – in particular their concern that online publication in forms that they could not predict may seriously damage their future work.

We had a very good discussion and the response was positive.

Posted on by mklang

Raiding Pirate Bay

What is The Pirate Bay (TPB) supposed to have done?

TPB is the site of a BitTorrent tracker. In other words it helps users to locate BitTorrent files. BitTorrent is a variant (some would say development) of the Peer-to-Peer networks. It (the BitTorrent protocol) is a method for advertising and sharing files over a network.

Basically users looking for files (this can be films, music, texts, software etc) go to the search engine (TPB) and conduct a search. If they find what they are looking for they can download a â??.torrentâ?? file. This is not the actual end file they are looking for. It is a file which contains meta data about the file which they are looking for.

This data contains two sections. One that specifies the URL of the tracker and the other that contains the filename, fragment size, key length and a pass. The torrent file can contain information about many end files.

By activating the torrent file one begins the download of the end file or files. These are downloaded from several computers where the file is stored. As soon as part of the file is downloaded the downloader also becomes a source where others may download this part of the file. Once the download is complete the downloader may decide to keep this file available to others or remove it from the swarm.

Torrents are used to coordinate file sharing of copyrighted material both with and without the copyright holders consent. The technology cannot define whether the actions are legal or illegal. At present I have two complete files which I have been sharing for some time via BitTorrent. Since I am sharing complete files I am called a Seeder.

I have the most recent version of UBUNTU which is a Linux operating system licensed under the GPL license where sharing (and more) it is allowed. I have a film called Elephants Dream which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License and it is therefore permissible to share. In both these cases I am providing a service and helping the legal distribution of material.

OK â?? so that was the technical side. What does TPB do?

TPB is a search engine which helps people find the small tracker (.torrent) files. In other words the small files which contain information about where the end files are within the network. These tracker (.torrent) files are possibly not even capable of being copyrightable. If they are protected by copyright then they are the property of the author â?? in other words their creator. Not the creator of the end files that they track.

TPB case is going to be exciting to watch because the people in control of TPB are well aware of their legal position and of what they are doing. They will not have made the newbie mistake of having copyrighted material on their servers without permission.

Is it illegal to do what TPB does? If I tell you that you can buy a Gucci wallet knockoff at a well known marketplace am I guilty of the crime of â??facilitating copyright infringementâ??? Better still if I tell you how to make your own Gucci wallet am I still innocent? If I could sow and I create a copy of a fashionable suit for my own use is this copyright violation? If I instruct someone else is this â??facilitating copyright infringementâ???

If TPB are â??facilitating copyright infringementâ?? then what about Google? or Flickr? Google helps me find images and texts of masses of copyrighted material. Flickr not only helps me find it but also helps me store it?

What about the local library? They help me find and copy the material I needed to write this postâ?¦

The next step is obviously the question of the police action. The police have removed property from TPB. Removing property is a serious step and the question is whether the alleged crime motivates such action. In the case of computer equipment the question of surplus information must also be taken into consideration. In other words have the police taken too much?

TPB website today states that even servers containing material from organisations not connected with TPB were taken â?? in this case this amounts to a serious violation of an organisations ability to communicate. Can this amount of force justified â?? is the police action proportional to the alleged crime? Especially when other non-accused organisations are affected by police action.

Posted on by mklang

Read this book

The blurb on the back of the book is important since it has to interest the reader and at the same time be a factual discription – without being too long, complex or explanatory… So after a period of thought and procrastination this is what I have:

This work is on the democratic effects of attempts to regulate disruptive technology. By looking at the phenomenon of online civil disobedience, viruses, spyware, online games, software standards and Internet censorship this work shows the effects of regulation upon the core democratic values of Participation, Communication, Integrity, Property, Access and Autonomy.

Social interaction and organisation are, in part, shaped by the technology used. The social differences between the technology of snail-mail and the technology of e-mail are defined by features that the technology allows, and the limitations that constrain, the user modes of interaction. Therefore technological innovation and development over time affects the ways in which social interaction and communication are carried out. Certain forms of gradual technological innovation and development may be easily assimilated while other forms are more disruptive. This disruption can be seen in the way which new technologies affect the organisation of social interaction and are called, in this work: disruptive technology.

This work studies regulation as an attempt to come to terms with the disruptive effects of technology upon social interaction. This is done by focusing on the attempts to regulate the disruptive effects of Internet technology and the consequences of these regulatory attempts on the IT-based participatory democracy. In conclusion, this work will show that the regulation of technology is the regulation of democracy.

Would you read this book? If so you can download it here.

Posted on by mklang